Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 15.djvu/240

232 agree with me: there's the short and the long, and I won't do it: so take your answer, dear little young women; and I have no more to say to you to night, because of the archbishop; for I am going to write a long letter to him; but not so politickly as formerly: I won't trust him.

8. Well then, come, let us see this letter; if I must answer it, I must. What's here now? yes faith, I lamented my birthday two days after, and that's all: and you rhyme, madam Stella, were those verses made upon my birthday? faith, when I read them, I had them running in my head all the day, and said them over a thousand times; they drank your health in all their glasses, and wished, &c. I could not get them out of my head. What; no, I believe it was not; what do I say upon the eighth of December? Compare, and see whether I say so. I am glad of Mrs. Stoyte's recovery, heartily glad: your Dolly Manley's and bishop of Cloyne's child I have no concern about: I am sorry in a civil way, that's all. Yes, yes, sir George St. George dead. Go, cry, madam Dingley; I have written to the dean. Raymond will be rich, for he has the building itch. I wish all he has got may put him out of debt. Poh, I have fires like light'ning; they cost me twelvepence a week, beside small coal. I have got four new caps, madam, very fine and convenient, with striped cambrick, instead of muslin; so Patrick need not mend them, but take the old ones. Stella snatched Dingley's word out of her pen; Presto a cold; why all the world here is dead with them: I never had any thing like it in my life; 'tis not gone in five weeks. I hope